By Wendy Campbell, CLTC® – Wendy Campbell, CLTC® | Partner & Head of Insurance

The other driver runs the red light. The fault is not in question, the police report is clear, and your medical bills from the weeks that follow climb past one hundred thousand dollars. Then your attorney makes a phone call and learns the number that decides everything: the at-fault driver carries Washington’s minimum bodily injury coverage, twenty-five thousand dollars per person. That is the entire pool of money available from their policy. Your remaining seventy-five thousand dollars in bills has to come from somewhere, and the somewhere is the part most drivers have never thought about.

This is the gap almost every driver has, and it has nothing to do with how carefully you drive. It has to do with how well, or how poorly, the other person on the road is insured. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, usually written together as UM/UIM, is the part of your own policy built for exactly this moment.

What UM/UIM Actually Does

Liability coverage, the part of your auto policy required by Washington law, pays for harm you cause to others. It does nothing for your own injuries when someone else is at fault. That job belongs to UM/UIM.

Uninsured motorist coverage responds when the at-fault driver has no insurance at all. Underinsured motorist coverage responds when the at-fault driver has insurance, but not enough to cover what they did to you. In the example above, the at-fault driver was insured, just poorly. Thankfully underinsured motorist coverage is what would stand in the gap between their limit and your losses. Washington requires insurers to offer UM/UIM, and drivers can decline it only with a signed written waiver, which means some drivers have turned it down without fully registering what they gave up.

One in Five Washington Drivers Is Uninsured

Start with a number that should change how you think about every commute. According to the Insurance Information Institute, drawing on Insurance Research Council data, an estimated 19.1 percent of Washington motorists were uninsured as of 2023. That is roughly one in five drivers, and it places Washington among the ten worst states in the country for uninsured motorists. The trend is not improving, either. Across most of the country, uninsured rates rose over the years leading up to that figure.

Picture your own daily drive with that statistic in mind. The four cars around you at a red light, the line of traffic on the way to work, statistically, one of them is carrying no insurance at all. If that driver causes a crash and injures you, there is no liability policy on the other side to pay for your medical bills, your lost wages, or your totaled vehicle. The money has to come from somewhere, and uninsured motorist coverage is the only part of the system built to provide it.

Then there is the larger group hiding behind that statistic. The 19.1 percent counts drivers with no insurance whatsoever. It does not count the drivers who are technically insured but carry only Washington’s bare minimum. Washington’s minimum liability limits are twenty-five thousand dollars per person, fifty thousand dollars per accident, and ten thousand dollars for property damage, commonly written as 25/50/10. Those numbers were set long ago and have not kept pace with the cost of modern medical care or modern vehicles. A single serious injury can run past the twenty-five thousand dollar figure in a matter of days. A late-model vehicle can pass the ten thousand dollar property damage figure with a single hard hit. Add the uninsured and the barely insured together, and the share of drivers who cannot fully cover the harm they might do to you is far larger than one in five.

Here is the part worth sitting with. If the driver who hits you carries the state minimum, the minimum is your ceiling unless your own UM/UIM coverage raises it. If they carry nothing, the ceiling is zero. Your careful driving record does not change either outcome. Their thin policy, or missing policy, becomes your problem.

Why Your UM/UIM Should Match Your Liability

Most drivers think hard about their liability limits, the coverage that protects other people from them, and then leave UM/UIM as an afterthought, often at a low default number. This mindset is quietly backwards. Your liability limit reflects the harm you might do. Your UM/UIM limit reflects the harm that might be done to you by someone with no resources behind them.

A practical principle many drivers find useful is to match the two. If you carry, for example, two hundred fifty thousand dollars of bodily injury liability because that is the level of protection you want around your assets, it is worth asking why the coverage protecting your own body and income would be set any lower. Matching UM/UIM to liability is a straightforward way to make sure both sides of the policy reflect the same judgment about what a serious accident actually costs.

If your household runs more than one vehicle, it is also worth reviewing how limits are structured across all of them, since the way coverage is arranged across vehicles and drivers can affect what is available after a serious crash. The specifics depend on your carrier and policy language, which is exactly the kind of detail worth confirming rather than assuming.

A quick way to find your own gap: pull your auto declarations page and look for the UM/UIM line. If it reads 25/50, or is missing entirely, your protection against the millions of minimally insured and uninsured drivers on the road is set to the same low bar you would never accept for your liability coverage.

Bottom line, you can control the car you drive and the attention you pay, but you cannot control how well the next driver is insured. UM/UIM is the coverage that puts that decision back in your hands, and it matters most for anyone with income to protect, a household that depends on their health, or assets a long recovery could drain.

Trusted Insurance Solutions for Individuals, Families & Businesses

At Fortis Insurance, our mission is to help individuals, families, and businesses protect what matters most with personalized insurance solutions and trusted guidance. We understand that every situation is unique, which is why we take the time to understand your needs and recommend coverage that provides confidence and peace of mind.

Whether you’re looking for personal insurance, business coverage, employee benefits, or risk management solutions, our experienced team is here to help you make informed decisions every step of the way.

Protect what matters most with confidence. Contact Fortis Insurance today to schedule your free insurance consultation and discover coverage tailored to your needs.

Schedule Your Free Consultation Today!

Resources:

https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-uninsured-motorists

https://www.insurance.wa.gov/auto-insurance

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/underinsured-motorist-coverage.asp